The Lure (7 page)

“Two other men were found dead in their apartment. One knew Wills. Both were pals of Landau. Neither was mentioned in his brief or known to the grand jury. No drugs were found. But the method of death was the same. Only this time the killer was looking for something and, failing to find it, had set fire to the place. A sharp-nosed neighbor smelled the smoke. Only a few files were found charred next to the bodies. Some of the papers pertained to Landau’s club. Soon after his death, Landau’s parents sold the discotheque to a corporation from Connecticut.

“Others at Landau’s club got threatening phone calls. Other clubs catering to homosexuals were harassed by unknown men. Several bars in the West Street area came in for the same treatment—the owners threatened, beaten up. Sometimes, they just disappeared.”

“The Mafia?” Noel asked.

“Maybe. Probably not. The techniques are classic syndicate methods. But, the Mafia has more or less abandoned penny ante business like bars and clubs. Nowadays they play the stock market, sit on the boards of directors of multinational corporations. More money there. The one bar in the area which we know to have mob connections was subjected to the same treatment. I can’t see them hurting their own people, can you?

“No,” Loomis went on, “whoever is behind this wants us to think it’s the Mafia or that it’s unorganized, merely random. But I think it’s quite shrewdly organized. By one man—the man we call Mr. X. The mystery man. The operative who was cut up that morning was supposed to be linking up with Mr. X. Evidently he was discovered to be a decoy.”

Noel ate his second bagel, drank his third cup of coffee, and listened fascinated. Loomis was like a TV police series come to life, sitting in his kitchen.

“Mr. X wants everything the Mafia has given up. And more, too. Maybe pornography, more than likely a boy prostitution ring up on Forty-second Street. But those are only sidelines compared to really profitable operations—large-scale drug smuggling, wholesale larceny from the ships that dock on the closed piers on the West Side. We don’t know what else. But he seems to be building a little empire right under our noses. And he’s not very nice to anyone he feels is in his way.

“We still haven’t gotten a shadow of him. Whenever we think we’re coming close, there’s another clubowner beaten or killed, another operative slain, another takeover completed. Like magic. The man must have a sixth sense about us. It would need a sixth sense, because only those directly involved, and now you, Mr. Cummings, even know that Whisper exists.”

“Whisper?”

“That’s what our unit’s been nicknamed. Because it’s so hush-hush. We’re not even directly funded. We’re staffed by members of the U.S. Drug agency, state and city police. Our salaries are all laundered through an innocuous city agency I cannot name.”

“Is that why you were in the abandoned federal jail?” Noel asked, trying to piece it all together.

“Were. We’ve moved again. I’m not free to say where. I’ve been in the intelligence business for thirty-five years, starting with the OSS in the Mediterranean, during World War Two. I’ve never run across anyone so elusive. We’re never left with a clue. His men must be professionals, his organization small enough to deal with information leaks and betrayals, but large enough to operate against three of our men at any one time. Our informers report in every day. That morning they had nothing to report. They never have anything to report. It’s exasperating.

“Meanwhile,” he said, lowering his voice, “after chasing his shadow for so long, I’ve gotten to know a bit about Mr. X.”

Loomis’s last words recalled the shadows, the stabbing of Kansas in the debris-filled room. Had Mr. X been holding the cigarette lighter?

“He’s smart,” Loomis said; “no half-assed petty crook. He has this intuition about policemen: more than caution. More like true paranoia. And I admit this is a long shot, but I’m willing to defend it—he’s a homosexual himself.”

Noel had followed Loomis’s reasoning right to the end. “But haven’t all his victims been homosexuals?”

“Or decoys. Exactly. Mr. X’s businesses are exploitative. But in order to. exploit a certain group you have to know
how
they can be exploited. Mr. X has the magic touch: he knows which bars and clubs are most popular, which are only fly-by-night, or financially shaky. And when he moves in, it’s done legally, tight as a drum. My theory is that one day Mr. X just woke up, looked around, saw how much was to be gotten on his own turf and then determined to get it.”

“Which is why he’s been so careful to throw you off the track,” Noel said, “by making it seem as though a psychopath or the mob were behind it. But can’t you locate him through the ownership papers of the bars?”

“He’s a silent partner. The up-front owner is usually some nobody. In half the cases the legal ownership hasn’t changed. But we’re certain Mr. X has taken over anyway. Everything even vaguely connected with this case has been checked out dozens of times.”

“Even me?”

Loomis seemed to be expecting that question. “What do you want to know? You were born October twentieth, 1947, in Alameda, California. Your family moved to Mamaroneck, New York, in 1952. You went to Swarthmore College in 1965, majored in English literature for two years, then switched to social sciences. You studied two years after that, from 1970 to 1972 at Columbia University, worked part-time in a children’s afterschool center on Rivington Street. In 1969 you married Monica Sherman, also of Mamaroneck. You paid two thousand, three hundred and forty-five dollars in income taxes to the federal government last year. You have a savings account and a special checking account at Manufacturers Hanover Trust, its Murray Hill branch. Your health insurance expired three years ago and was picked up by New York University one month later. Your status changed from family plan to individual in a group at that time. Your Social Security number is one four seven, three three, nine eight—”

“All right,” Noel said, “I believe you. That’s pretty impressive. But I thought you believed I had nothing to do with it?”

“I believed you, Mr. Cummings, but I had to check out your story. You were followed for seventeen days. When you went out bicycling in the morning, one car followed you halfway, another the rest of the way. The day after the murder, you changed routes—which didn’t surprise us. You kept to the new route consistently. On Wednesday, two weeks ago, you went to two Fellini movies.”

“Are you still following me?”

“You were dropped four days ago. Even if you were deliberately keeping a low profile, you couldn’t possibly have looked so clean to us.”

“Why shouldn’t I? I’m not a homosexual.”

“That wouldn’t prove a thing.”

Noel had an anxious thought. “Did you tap my phone?”

“We’re not authorized to do that. But—as I said—you were our prime suspect, until you checked out to be exactly what you seemed to be.”

Noel was intrigued—and secretly pleased—that he’d been a suspect. What would Alison say when she heard that? Noel could already see her mouth form an
O
of surprise. He was surprised, himself.

“Why tell me all this?” he asked.

“To be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Cummings, we’re back to square one. So we try something different. Since Mr. X can smell policemen, we get people to work for us who aren’t policemen. People like you.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, it took a minute for Noel to register astonishment. “Me? You’re kidding?”

“Why not?”

“It’s not my kind of thing,” Noel tried to explain. “Look around you, what does this place look like to you?”

“Like the somewhat sparsely furnished apartment of a New York University sociology professor. That’s why we need you.”

“I’m not trained for it. I’ve never even handled a gun.”

“You won’t have a gun. You won’t need one. It won’t be that kind of job. Look at yourself, Mr. Cummings, you’re in better shape than most rookies fresh out of the Police Academy. You do two, three hours of exercise a day?”

“Something like that. But…”

“How would you like to come down to the academy? I’ll lay two-to-one odds you outrun, outjump, outreact, and outthink any man there. We’ve watched you, you know.”

“That may be so,” Noel said, trying not to feel too flattered. “But they’re trained to think in certain ways. To be defensive. To be cautious. To know how to handle people.”

“And you aren’t? You’re a sociology professor. Isn’t that the study of people?”

“In groups, yes, but…”

“You’ll be
in
a group. I just want you to find me the one in the group that stands out—the rotten apple. My men are fumbling around in the dark. They don’t know who or what they’re looking for. You could probably spot him on a dime. You’ve had psychology, too, I know. I read it in your records.”

Noel admitted that.

“So, you know what to look for. For you, this straw in the haystack will be bent a certain, unmistakable way, won’t it?”

“I suppose. Look, I really feel flattered. But I’ve got my teaching and all—”

“It won’t interfere with your teaching. I’m simply asking you to show up at a certain place for several hours a night. A bar off Christopher Street we’re certain Mr. X owns and frequents. All I want is for you to bartend a few nights.”

“But there must be dozens of homosexual bars in the city. Why that one?”

“Because this bar attracts the kind of homosexuals we believe he associates with. And because it’s the most popular one at the moment.”

“That’s still pretty hit or miss, no?”

“Maybe. But without knowing who Mr. X is, we still know a lot about him. We’re certain some of his victims were once his sexual partners. Others he’s set up in the bars as owners or managers fall into the same pattern. Let me show you.”

Loomis produced a manila envelope he’d been carrying in a side pocket of his coat, and pulled out a dozen eight-by-ten-inch photos.

The first seemed to be a typical male beefcake pose. A curly-haired, handsome young man, with a small dark mustache, large, light-colored eyes, and a muscular though not grotesquely overdeveloped body. He wore only a small bikini. His skin looked oiled.

“Bill Ames,” Loomis said. “One of the two men found in the burning apartment.”

The next photo was of a dancer in midleap, his body in profile, his head turned full face to the camera. His arms were akimbo and his handsomely boyish face was broken in a wide grin. Dark curly hair and light eyes. Not as heavily mustached as the first man, but of distinctly athletic build, highlighted by the closefitting tights.

“Rudy Brill,” Loomis said. “A friend of Landau’s. DOA. It looked like a drug overdose.”

The third man was a bit older. Also in superb physical shape, tanned, mustached, blue eyes, wavy jet hair, handsome. He was leaning against the railing of a beach house, the ocean in the background. “This is Landau,” Loomis said. “Now do you see?”

Noel sorted through the other, similar photos.

“Well, they certainly seem to fit a particular mold.”

“How tall are you,” Loomis said, “six feet?”

“Exactly.”

“Ames was six one. Landau a half inch taller. The others about the same. Care to look in the mirror and see the other similarities?”

“No, I get the idea.”

“You see, Mr. Cummings, you won’t really have to look for Mr. X. He’s going to find you!”

That gave Noel a chill. Trying to dissuade Loomis, he said, “What if he’s changed his type?”

“Unlikely.”

“It’s sort of hard thinking of myself as, well you know, fitting a certain physical description. As so much meat.”

“That’s exactly what you will be. A nice juicy piece of bait for Mr. X. As my grandma used to say, it takes honey, not vinegar to catch a bear. Come on, Noel, say you’ll do it. It won’t take much of your time. You’ll be well paid. You’ll be doing a service to the community. All you have to do is tend bar a few nights a week and wait until Mr. X comes along. Then we pounce on him. You’re perfect. The other operatives were too busy playing Kojak just to wait. You’ll never be suspected. Say you’ll do it.”

That Noel even considered the offer shocked him. He wasn’t a doer, he was a thinker. Despite all his exercise, he thought himself an intellectual. Others he’d grown up with had sailed on merchant steamers, worked their way across the Pacific and Indian oceans. Some hitchhiked across country, lived on ashrams in India, communes in the Oregon woods. Not he. He wasn’t adventurous. Yet the last few minutes had made Noel feel this was the way to find adventure, to break out of the routines he’d fallen into since Monica’s death. He was swept off his feet, riding a higher altitude than he had since…since when? Of course, since the morning of the slaying three weeks before.

And then he remembered Kansas, bleeding, faceless, dying in all the garbage and fallen timbers. No. It was too dangerous. He couldn’t accept.

“I don’t know if you can understand my point of view, Mr. Loomis…” he began.

“Wait a minute,” Loomis interrupted. “Please. Let me show you how this could be an experience of the most crucial importance to you. Maybe I’m stepping out-of-bounds by saying it, but I happen to know that your current position is not the most secure, so I…”

“How do you know that?”